The Wish
The wish to grow is the most powerful wish a human can have - Swami Rudrananda
What is the wish to grow and how do we work with it?
Our wish to grow can start as a desire, a restlessness, or even an anxiety - we notice something is there but we are not quite sure what it is. We haven’t formed words for it yet. We may notice that we desire to move away from pain and struggle and towards something we desire to be better. We may think that there is something off in our lives and we look outward to find the cause of our unease.
We may blame our job, spouse, children, where we live, or (even) the dog for this increasing sense of disquiet. At some point we realize that the voice calling us from within can only be satisfied by our turning inward towards it and following its trail of whispers. It speaks to us in the stillness of night, waking us with thoughts of “why am I here?” or “what’s most important about this life I’m living?” “who am I” and “what’s my purpose?”
The wish to grow may show up as an intense yearning for a deeper connection with life itself.
The deep yearning itself is Grace breathing into our hearts and showing us that something deeper is close by. If you have ever experienced the deep yearning then consider yourself lucky. That intense desire can carry us forward on our journey of self exploration into self transformation. The energy of that yearning can propel us to inquire more deeply within ourselves: from reading books, taking a meditation class, finding a meditation teacher, joining a spiritual practice, to making deep changes in our lives that support our new found expansion and way of being.
Eventually the wish to grow leads us to move beyond living from our small self to living from a deeper, more expanded self. The wish to grow is our wish for freedom - freedom from struggle, pain, and the constant wheel of samsara, our deeply ingrained habit patterns of the ego. The wish to grow is our yearning for oneness with our source.
The intense yearning can propel us through lifetimes of resistance and ignorance. But how do we work with a wish to grow when it shows up as feelings of disquiet, restlessness, or even struggle?
In our meditation, we recognize that the thoughts and feelings of struggle, pain, and resistance are themselves the wish to grow - disguised as the limitations that get in the way of our freedom. We are being asked to surrender more deeply and offer these up - to Divine Intelligence, God and Goddess, Source, Spirit. Embedded in surrender is the wish to grow. When we speak our intention to surrender, our resistance and our stuckness begin to release their hold on us. The energy of the intention carries with it a force, a power, that awakens within us again that desire to grow, to be free, to move beyond our small self.
As we cultivate our wish to grow, as we connect daily with this place within us that deeply desires freedom and peace, our wish to grow transforms into devotion: an inward devotion to ourselves, to our connection with the Divine, and a communication with our Divine self. We cultivate a personal relationship with our wish to grow, which indeed is nothing less than our Higher Self calling out to us. When we recognize this, our wish to grow moves from calling to devotion to presence.
Our lives are continuously calling us to grow, calling us to our freedom. When we recognize that everything in our life is pointing us towards our freedom and our liberation from suffering, we realize there is nothing to resist or struggle against.